Jessica Jahiel's HORSE-SENSE Newsletter Archives

book question

From: Dorene

Dear Jessica, I know that you know a lot about books so I am writing to you with this question. When I was young (I'm 43 now) I remember reading and loving a book about wild horses in Australia (or maybe New Zealand). The "hero" was a white stallion, and there were no people in the book, only horses, and they "talked" to each other. I have a daughter who is now seven, and she loves horses as much as I do. I would love to read this book to her, and I've looked everywhere for it but can't even find anyone who knows that it ever existed. I'm sure that I remember it, I can even see the cover picture in my mind, it was the head of a beautiful, proud white stallion. Please tell me I'm not crazy and this book really does exist! I think the author was someone called Miller, but my librarian can't find anything like this. Help us please! Thank you so much for doing horse-sense, I hope you can help me. You've helped so many other people! Counting on you, Dorene

Hi Dorene! You're lucky, I too read that book when I was very young, and thought it was wonderful. Your librarian couldn't find it under "Miller" because the author's name is actually Elyne Mitchell. The book you remember is called "The Silver Brumby", and it's the story of a young stallion called Thowra.

The book was first published in the late 1950s, I believe. If you can't find it in your library, ask your librarian to look for a copy that you can borrow via interlibrary loan. Meanwhile, if it's something you want to own, any good store specializing in used and out-of-print books will be able to do a book search for you and perhaps find you a copy that you and your daughter can add to your personal library.

Oh, and while you're looking for THAT book, did you know that there were others that followed it? This was actually a series. The ones I remember were

The Silver Brumby
Silver Brumby's Daughter Silver
Brumbies of the South
Silver Brumby Kingdom

and for all I know there may be more in the series; those are just the ones I read and enjoyed as a child.

Jessica

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